Thursday, February 10, 2011

Book Review: The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison
The Bluest Eye

In honor of Black Heritage Celebration, we are featuring different authors that have a strong root in the literary heritage of Black Heritage. One of these great authors is Toni Morrison. One of her most acclaimed works is The Bluest Eye. The novel was the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature as well as a selection for Oprah’s Book Club.

The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison’s first novel, a book heralded for its richness of language and boldness of vision. Set in the author’s girlhood hometown of Lorain, Ohio, it tells the story of black, eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove. Pecola prays for her eyes to turn blue so that she will be as beautiful and beloved as all the blond, blue-eyed children of America. In the autumn of 1941, the year the marigolds in the Breedloves’ garden do not bloom, Pecola’s life does change – in painful, devastating ways.

With its vivid evocation of the fear and loneliness at the heart of a child’s yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment, The Bluest Eye remains one of Toni Morrison’s most powerful, unforgettable novels – and a significant work of American fiction.

Among the critical acclaim about Morrison:

Toni Morrison may be the last classic American writer, squarely in the tradition of Poe, Melville, Twain, and Faulkner
~Newsweek

The finest novelist of our time
~Vogue

Morrison is easily the finest writer on the contemporary scene
~Philadelphia Bulletin